Page 26 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #10

(Nest. Flight. Sky. continued) imperfect.
and Elvis Presley—played their songs as loud
as any daughter in a busy hospital is allowed to do. Turned the volume down when the nurses stopped by. Went out into the world with my sis- ter, brought things back to the room no one could use. Paced the hallways like a renegade, search- ing for a doctor with a cure.
The doctors were imperfect, too. The doctors failed to conclude in time, to establish a proper protocol, to set her on the path toward a cure. It all could have been different but for a day or two. She would have been saved save for this: in the hospital, this time, they gave her blood thinners for a condition she didn’t have. Upon a too-long at last, when they had established a reliable diagnosis, when they had a reliable treatment plan, they couldn’t do anything until her blood was right again.
I read my mother the early pages of the first young adult novel I would publish in the coming months. I told her about the foxes I’d see driv- ing home. I told her stories that she’d love to tell about her own mother, her dear brother, all the friends she had—some of those friends coming to visit now, leaving her gifts, sending her cards, holding her hand. I bought her early Christmas presents, wrapped them in off-season paper, un- wrapped them with my own hands, and said out loud what each thing was and why I’d brought it to her:
We’ll operate Monday, they promised. You’ll feel so much better, they promised. This will all be over then.
This reminded me of you.
This seemed so right for winter.
Please, we said, can’t you operate now? Save her now? Fix her now? We said it. All of us did, my mother, too.
An artist made this; it’s one of a kind; it could sit on the sill by the orchids.
But the thinners were in the blood, and the op- eration had to wait, and the stroke the surgery would have prevented struck my mother later that same day.
Look, Mom. A cello, Mom, a miniature, ornamen- tal cello.
Calamitous. Devastating.
One day, just before her final words were gone (it all happened so quickly, it is recalled in slow time, it is jumbled), I brought my laptop to the hospital and sat it down on the starched white sheets and played for her a recording of me dancing. I had only just recently learned the waltz, and in the video that I pulled up for her
My father was there when it happened. I was out, it was late, I felt something harden in my heart, caught myself, caught my breath.
What’s wrong? my husband said, there in the dark, as I knelt to the floor, among a crowd of dancers.
to see I was on a stage with a black-haired in- structor. I was wearing a silky red dress with a sequined belt, a plunging back. I’d had my hair done and an expert draw the color around my eyes, and I’d put on a pair of glittering earrings. My mother had never before seen her oldest daughter quite like this—her hair so smooth, her impression so glamorous.
It’s my mother, I said.
My phone rang early the next morning, and I knew.
The waltz that I danced with a pro lasted for less than two minutes. I put the laptop on her better side and played the recording, made sure she could see. And then I showed her what real danc- ers do—fast-forwarded the video to the final segment, where the pros performed their cha- chas and rumbas in all-over sequins, long lashes,
I had been my mother’s daughter all my life, but now I was rushing to be the daughter I’d wished I’d been. In the hospital I read her Ted Kooser poems, certain that she could not leave this earth without knowing something of Ted Kooser. To the hospital I brought a CD player and the recordings of Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart, Harry Connick, Jr.,
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